Bale presses, sometimes referred to as hay making machinery capable of producing hay, straw or other fodder bales of large rectangular dimensions, for instance of the order 30.times.30.times.60 or 40.times.50.times.100 inches (80.times.80.times.150 or 100.times.120.times.250 centimeters) have been available for a number of years. Inspite of the considerable financial outlay that which the purchase of such machines entails, they rapidly gained popularity particularly for very large farms. Such machines are however extremely costly, of considerable size and weight, and often require high powered tractors for their use. A need has been felt for bale presses of an intermediate size, better adapted to medium scale farms, and producing bales of which the thickness would be half of that of the bales produced by larger machines, that is on the order of 15 to 20 inches (40 to 50 cm).
However, for the same tonnage of fodder, the number of bales required is doubled with such intermediate capacity machines, increasing therefore the number of machine cycles and the cost of handling the bales.